News links for Dec 11 2013 – 1

1. One thing Nelson Mandela did in fact give the world is a way to reuse old car tires. (Yes it is a satire site. But he did indeed do this and advocate it)

2. Israeli officials: U.S. admits Iran will get $20 billion from sanctions relief

U.S. officials admit to Israeli colleagues that they greatly underestimated the economic benefits Tehran would reap from Geneva accord.

3. Kenya police in deadly ambush near Somalia border

4. Syrian regime takes Nabak in string of battlefield victories  

(Hard to believe I would ever be ‘cheering’ for Assad)

Thank you M, Fjordman, GoV, ML, Wrath of Khan and all.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

9 Replies to “News links for Dec 11 2013 – 1”

  1. I was never in doubt that Assad was a far better dictator then any other Arab dictator. The evidence was tha5t he allowed religious minorities to practice their publicly faith and without fear. As for comparison, we have the most odious regime in that region – the Saudi would-be royal, who our western leaders laud.

    As for democracy – that is not possible in an Islamic country. The best they can get is a reasonably tolerant dictator, but not so tolerant as to let the MB run riot- fair but firm.

  2. “(Hard to believe I would ever be ‘cheering’ for Assad)”

    Quite. But had we sided from Assad from day 1, in return for him easing up on oppression, a lot of lives might have been saved, indeed, Syria might have been saved; the tolerant, secular that my stepdaughter lived in, studying Arabic at the University of Damascus, that she had to leave when the troubles started to look bad, is gone for ever. Now it is just another country hooked into the the Jihad that is Sunni Islam. We could have stopped this. Instead, we made it worse, just as we have in Iraq, just as we have in most of the “Arab Spring” (ha bloody ha) countries.

  3. DP111 – I’d stay that stability trumps democracy any day in the Middle East. And I quote Morsi – “democracy is just a bridge”; i.e. you use it, cross it, and then chuck it away. As he did.

  4. jeremyp99

    I agree with you.

    OTH if one examines the situation from a strategic POV, then reducing the Muslim ME/Afghanistan to tatters, was the only way to respond 9/11,as most Muslims were jubilant that America had been brought to heel. Afghanistan was used to destabilise Pakistan.

    Considering that there were no state actors, such as Japan at Pearl Harbour, this left a policy, that one way or other could achieve the goal – WMDs, chemical weapons, freedom and democracy for all, including women, were all used as reasons, and abandoned when they ran out of traction.

    There is lot more to play still. I dont the general strategy has been abandoned. Its just modified a bit. The play will continue for another 50 years.

  5. The west use to take the attitude towards dictators that they might be SOB’s but they were our SOB’s, that attitude helped win the Cold War.

  6. I’m reading Lee Smith’s “The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations”.
    Forget superimposing Western political motivations on the Arab world. That world remains pretty much as Mo left it: tribal cultures, constantly riven by violence, the dominant ruling the weak by ruthless exercise of power.
    [My take: Clashes are endemic to a system structured around a political-societal code as primitive as the Koran.]

    Excerpts from Amazon blurb:
    … much of the repression that stagnates Arab society happens at the level of the family where rigorous redlines of social and religious behavior are enforced. What’s more, in a region seething with minorities, with no liberal tradition, no reverence for individual rights, and no tolerance for difference, authoritarian regimes exist because the alternative, as has been seen most recently in Lebanon and Iraq, is endless sectarian violence.
    …Arab peoples and governments naturally align themselves with the strongest power, even when that power is the United States or Israel.

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Strong-Horse-Politics-Civilizations/dp/product-description/0385516118/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books